January 2008

- If you have a website, your logs are a great source of information. For complete, in depth analysis, you can't beat Google Analytics, but you can actually get a lot of quick and useful stats from the command line with just "grep"

- >Ah, 2008. It seems like just yesterday that we all were wondering how we'd pronounce our years as the millennium changed. Would we say "twenty-oh-one" or "two thousand-one" or even "twenty-aught-one"? That all shook itself out, and soon we have another chance to change our minds:

- There are a number of automatic ping sites that will notify other sites that you have updated your pages. If you don't have notification software built into your site, or if there are sites you want to notify that aren't supported by your software, these can be convenient.

- Who hasn't thought of working for themselves? I know quite a few who read here have more than thought it: they, like me, have actually done it and do run their own ship. If you are one who hasn't made that switch but still has the dream, I wish you luck and hope that you can join us soon.

- Numly can help protect your digital content by providing a third party verifiable time stamp that you create at the time you create your original content. You'll see the Numly barcode at the end of this post just above the copyright notice. If you click on that, you'll be taken to Numly where you can verify that this content really belongs to me.

- The mythical Superbox Mark I was not announced today: I had an exclusive opportunity to speak with Brian Casales, CEO of Gapple, Inc. about the heavily rumored upcoming "Superbox Mark I" that is supposed to shake our industry to its knees.

- While they were checking more reports, I talked with the owners about the foolishness of continuing with this system. I explained that SCO was in dire straights, might not last much longer, and that their old (3.2v5.0.5) OS wouldn't be able to be installed on modern hardware.. I strongly suggested that they see what Sage could offer for an upgrade.

- You can use this for questions and articles. All submissions will be moderated before appearing on the site. If your post is inappropriate but not spam, you will get a response as long as you included your email. ANY POSTS TO THE FORUM WITHOUT A VALID EMAIL WILL BE REJECTED.

- Excellent technical coverage of X Windows: The title of this book is X Power Tools" and that is very unfortunate because it could lead you to think it either describes a collection of X clients that the author thinks you cannot live without or is one of those overly enthusiastic, very fluffy, not very useful books that generally are found with similar titles. This isn't either of those.. as I've implied in my title (which is too cutesy also, I agree), this is jam packed with useful technical information about installing, configuring and using X.

- As most readers here know, I'm no fan of Microsoft. However, Microsoft operating systems are a big part of today's computer world. While I may hope for change (and I really believe there will be change over the next decade), I can't afford to ignore Microsoft entirely. Hence this book. If you have been a casual Microsoft programmer, hacker or support person, this will give you the tools and knowledge to step up.

- Yes, we should save Microsoft XP: A petition to save Windows XP has apparently now been "signed" by 12,000 people. The opinions generally are that Vista is junk, or it may not be junk but everyone needs more time (XP is currently scheduled for its swan dive on June 30, 2008), or Vista is a scam by Microsoft to make more money (hey - Microsoft does need money, doesn't it?).

- OK, what's the boring old codger's point? Just this: this stuff is all part of history. This post, this website, every comment, is also. So is every other website, and just about all of it is being archived somewhere, but there's no guarantee of that. The Wayback Machine has crawled and stored two billion web pages, but as they say:

- When I took the kitchen trash out to the garage this morning, I once again noticed two small green couch pillows sitting in the trash staging area.. at our house, that's where the plastic trash bags get filled up before they go to the barrel (conveniently located near the front of the garage so that it can be wheeled out on trash day)

- For most businesses today, a website is very important. A good website can bring in a lot of business, and a bad website can cost you. A "good" website needs good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) good design, good content.. a lot to think about. Where does SEO leave off and Design start? Or vice versa, if you prefer. Where does Business Consulting fit in? What about Copywriting? Why I am asking these questions?

- I wrote about this way back in February of 2006, and Google has added some of the things I wanted (like 'Undo"), but Gmail still lacks some things I think are important, so I'll bring it up yet again. Feel free to add anything on your wish list..

- It's an old adage: don't reinvent the wheel. Search Google for "reusable code" and you'll find hundreds of thousands of web posts and books extolling the virtues of both writing and using reusable code. Well, yeah, there are advantages .. Even if you feel you can write what you need, if there is nagging doubt that you really have dotted all the i's, maybe you should go get the code that has been time proven, right?

- This is a story about a vertical market application that was running on a SCO system. Yes, that SCO.. the one that's just about out of business now and, in the minds of many of us, are reaping just what they deserved. That SCO.

- Back in the fifties and sixties, an oft heard worry was that computers would displace people, that there would be massive layoffs as automation replaced humans. That doesn't seem to have happened. Computer adoption has caused shifts in wages but even when some blame is placed on computer adoption, studies seem quick to point out that other factors (like global outsourcing) are more significant.

- Yesterday I found myself in a situation no one ever wants to be in: I needed to restore a file from a customer's backups, but could not because no backups existed. How did we get to this abominable condition? Through a series of mistakes and bad practices. Are you making any of these mistakes?

- The arrival of Mark G. Sobell's "A practical guide to Ubuntu Linux" a few days ago prompted me to try living in Ubuntu for a day. I'm a Mac guy (or have been since OS X anyway), but that's because of Unix more than anything else, so I could just as easily use Linux as my daily OS.

- I frequently use the Perl CGI.pm module for forms. While re-writing a local (in my office) app yesterday, I was reminded that you don't often see people using multiple submits on forms. There's no reason why you cannot, and it can add functionality. Consider the following (just an image, it's not functional):